Do you ever have one of those moments with a stranger that isn't particularly significant, but it meant something to you? I had one of those last week when I was grocery shopping. I was buying ingredients to make fish tacos for the first time ever.

You know I always say that if my family won't eat the leftovers, the leftovers will come to them by making something out of the leftovers for dinner one night. Well, I felt the same way about the fish tacos, except it was changed to "if I can't find a fish taco as good as the one in Long Beach, I'll just make them them."

Anyway, when I was looking for the chipotle sauce there was an employee in the condiment aisle who asked if I needed help. I requested the sauce and she pointed it out. Then, because it's just my way and I can never pass up a moment to pass on words of wisdom to another person, I told her my quest for the perfect fish tacos.

I shared that the only combination that truly worked for me was Chipotle sauce AND fresh cilantro. Other fish tacos were okay, but none had measured up to that first fish taco I had in Long Beach. And though it seemed like a logical combination considering it's a fish taco, no other taco had both chipotle AND cilantro.

The gal said, "Everything is better with cilantro."

Our eyes met across the aisle. We both sighed. And though we had never met and would probably never meet again, we understood each other completely.

Sprinkle the fish with the chili powder, salt and pepper. Spray lightly with olive oil cooking spray and place on the broiler rack. Broil 5 inches from the heat until the fish flakes easily when tested with a fork, 3-5 minutes.

Divide the fish among the tortillas, top with the chipoltle, cilantro, and cabbage.

If you didn't notice by my little ditty last Thursday, I got the gardening bug. Yes, I know it's January, but I live in the Pacific Northwest and any day is a good day for gardening. Those several weeks of freezing weather made me feel cooped up. I don't garden constantly in the winter, but I like to know I can.

As I shopped for plants on Wednesday, I was literally the lone shopper at the nursery I went to and the Home Depot garden area. Both places were lean on the pickings, but not with what I was looking for.

I needed some blueberry bushes for the mason bees I'm adopting come March. Mason bees are native bees to this area. They look like gorgeous flies and unlike honey bees, they are not endangered. One of my neighbors makes the houses, has bee eggs on ice, and he's providing the kit and caboodle for free in the spring, and will harvest them and clean up after them in the fall. He told me they would be happiest if they had two varieties of blueberries in the yard. Their wish is my command.

I've been in a panic about where to find blueberries, it's not a normal plant for most store garden areas. When I took our old Christmas lights to the local McClendon's Hardware to recycle, they didn't have anything in their garden area. It baffled me because they are local and I thought they would keep native plants on hand this time of year. Then I remembered an outdoor nursery on the way home. It seemed there wasn't much even in their huge lot, but I was looking for bare roots, which means the bush or tree is dormant and doesn't have any leaves. Without leaves, plants aren't very noticeable when they're lined up in a gravel lot. They have no color to attract attention.

That nursery had exactly what I was looking for and more. I can't go into a nursery and not look at everything they have. It was raining a bit when I got there. I was overwhelmed at all varieties of blueberries they had and when the clouds really opened up and it began to pour, I stepped under the eaves of the building and did a little research on my phone.

It stopped raining by the time I made my picks: a Legacy, Elliot, and Pink Lemonade, because, well, it's named Pink Lemonade. I asked about an Oregon grape, which I'd also been looking for, because they are early bloomers and hummingbirds like them. He pointed me to the lot and I found the grape, two sweet heather plants that begged me to take them home, a gorgeous "Bud's Yellow Dogwood", which has the most interest in the fall and winter with its yellow twigs, and a huckleberry because Yogi Bear likes them and I like to say huckleberry.

I was pretty proud of myself for getting seven plants for $65. Price is another perk about shopping in the dead of winter. The salesman was impressed that I braved the storm and I told him I'd probably plant them in the rain, too. He called me a "hard core gardener". I laughed, because I've never thought of myself as one before, but my energy has been so good since last spring, I've made a lot of progress with my backyard.

Then because I had to go to Home Depot for a fridge filter (which they didn't have), I went into the garden department just to see what they had. They had very little, but there was a Gold Dust plant I was eyeing last summer that was much discounted, and a tree that was just pretty and also discounted.

When I got home with all my new friends, I had my work cut out for me. I looked on the weather channel app for the best day for the job and aside from three to six in the morning, which would have made the neighbors think I was burying dead bodies, Friday was good all day.

It was so blustery, I almost changed my mind. But I went out around noon and a couple hours later, I had myself some new foliage in my backyard.

​Things are sprouting up all over.

I relocated a cenothus from where it was blocking my view of the rock garden and planted a little blueberry patch in front of it to keep it company. My oldest got excited and asked if they would have "real" blueberries on them.

The dogwood is on the right, the yellow is a bright neon. So pretty. One of the heather plants is to the left.

The new tree is the yellow one on the left, it's a golden arborvitae, the second heather in the front, the Oregon Grape is the red small plant in the middle.

Last but not least is the huckleberry on the left by the fence, which I read will get very big in the shade and the Gold Dust on the right.

Even after all that, I showered, and made fish tacos for the first time. You'll have to wait until Good Food Friday for that story.

I feel like it was a wild weekend. It really wasn't, but I always feel that way when I'm gone from the house all weekend and my family is not. It's like having a cat loose in the main part of the house when I'm sleeping; I just know they are going to walk on the counters.

I was at our church's annual craft and hobby retreat all day Friday and Saturday. This was the final push to get my youngest daughter's school albums finished. I really thought I was going to make it because I was on a roll, but my back had been hurting me all weekend. I kept pushing through the pain and made it through her eighth grade year by Friday night. Then I went home, massaged my back with the electric massage machine. It was fine Saturday morning, then as the day went on it began to hurt again. I think it's the chairs and the angle of the seats in the church education center where the event was held. I even had a chair massage by a massage therapist on Saturday afternoon, but it wasn't enough to pull me from the abyss.

I made it until dinner at 6:45, then I just couldn't pull myself together, so I went home even though I still have her junior and senior year to finish. I'm going to make a point to complete them by the end of this month, though, because it took me two days to get organized enough to go to the retreat. Usually I show up and it takes me a day to figure out what I was doing last year (because that seems to be the only time I work on their school albums), then I feel like the weekend was wasted. I used my allotted half table and drug out a round table so I could lay out each year as I assembled the album.

At least I had a plan going in last weekend and I'm fairly organized in general. However, I can't let the momentum slide now that it's over. I won't need as large of a space to lay things out because I'm so close to being done, but I'll have to make myself take the time to finish.

My back is back to normal once again. I'll have to rethink my seating options next year. The house was fine when I returned Saturday evening, and though the mail was deposited in various locations around the house and my office is a wreck, at least the kids... errr cats, weren't on the counters.

Okay, so it's no secret to many people in my life that I got a new couch. this weekend. And because I wrote this week's column about it and don't want to repeat myself and for those who read it on Facebook, I will just put the link to it on Covington Reporter here so you can read the history and catch up with this blog:

There is, of course, continuing humor about getting this couch (which my cousin so fondly said on Facebook, "So the couch plot thickens."), not the least is that I've blogged about couches before. I'll put that link here too, but remember to come back:

The first part of the new couch adventure is that I gave our old couch to a friend. This isn't the first time I've dropped a couch off at a friend's. Of course, the first time we did it as a joke. It was a rather old, yet never used, extremely splashy, stiff, velveteen couch and my husband and I put it in my girlfriend's front yard in their hoity-toity, covenant-regulated neighborhood. She was home but didn't see us deposit it.

Hilarity ensued, but only after her husband came in raging with anger that she made some sort of deal with the devil over the couch and she figured out what was going on.

This time, though, I asked my friend if she wanted the couch. She had spent time sitting on the couch, so she knew what she was getting and was excited to get it. Like I said in my column, the couch was okay, I just longed for another eight-way, hand-tied, coil-spring couch like the one in our family room; but a different, smaller style.

When we got to her home around the corner with our old couch, her husband said, to my embarrassment, "Oh, is this your new couch?" Well, no, it was our old, rejected couch. But in my defense, at least I wasn't handing off some piece of junk. And I'm happy to report, they are totally enjoying our old couch because it's the nicest TV watching couch they've had.

Now on to the new couch. I wrote a lot about its eight-way, hand-tied, coil-springs and when I read the column to my mom, she said it reminded her of the English comedy on PBS "Keeping Up Appearances." The character Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet according to Hyacinth) is always, when serving tea to company, referring to her "Royal Doulton china with the hand painted periwinkles."

My mom and I had a good laugh over it. Then when I told my daughters that when people came to visit I could say, "Please, have a seat on my eight-way, hand-tied, coil-spring sofa," my youngest piped in with, "$300 off with an extra 10% off coupon." Okay, we lost it then.

So if you visit, I will usher you to my "Eight-way, hand-tied, coil-spring sofa, $300 off with the extra 10% coupon" so you can thoroughly appreciate what you are sitting on.

This is the second day back at school for my kids. I was kind of stricken by how tense I was all day yesterday. It was my youngest daughter's first day of middle school. She got into the public school's technology academy and was going to a different school with none of her friends. I thought it was rather brave.

I'm the youngest of two girls, as is she, and one of the best parts of being the youngest is you don't have to do anything first. All the scary mystery is gone. One of the worst parts of being the youngest? You don't have to do anything first; all the scary mystery is gone. I think as youngest children we get used to having the way paved. So although I was very proud of her for making the decision to go to a different school away from her friends, I was also very afraid for her.

I knew she could do it, but as parents, we know we don't like our kids to be miserable. I also know as parents, we can often steal their confidence by trying to clear the path ahead of them. Someone told me recently, "if we care too much, they have nothing to own."

So I tried to step back and take her lead. I took her to her orientation, I took her back before school started to go through the halls again (at her request), I showed her where she should get off the bus because it was different from where she got on, I showed her the school office (my kids don't have cell phones.) Then I put her on the bus the first day of school and suppressed my urge to follow the bus and track her progress. I clung to my cell phone all day and hit *69 on my phone at home to find out the number of the call I missed. I was on edge all day and I think I popped the tendons in my jaw.

When I picked her up? How was it? "Fine." That's all I got after my tense day, which I couldn't shake into the whole evening. She eventually gave up a little more information: she made a friend, ran into someone she knew, liked her teachers. But it was little satisfaction for my pain. Sigh!